Did the arcane buff happen? Haha why doesn’t it feel any stronger? 
sorry if it’s stupid question here but another person was looking into it too also. Thought I ask here.
Just remember it’s only an 8% increase, so it’s not a massive difference. If you were averaging 2M DPS, you’d now be around 2.16M under the same conditions.
We’ll need to wait for larger data samples to get a clearer picture of where we stand. My guess is that we’ll still fall a bit short, probably landing somewhere in the middle of the pack, but likely in the lower half.
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People who did the math said that it would take a 20% buff for Arcane to just break into the middle of the pack. 8% won’t even move it out of the bottom 5. But hey, we’ll probably beat Aug and the tanks now!
My guildie is an arcane mage and parses 100 on heroic fights. Learn the class better guys. Its not bottom of the pack that’s for sure
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This is not true at all. It’s now considered A tier.
And did all other players parsed 100 too so you/we can compare the real dmg?
Its always easy to say class xyz is good/bad if only 1 player is rly good at his spec/role and maybe gets PI/other buffs as well and has no extra jobs @ raid.
Arcane was not and will not be super only bec. of an 8% buff.
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I see a fight where your buddy parsed a 96 and did just a little bit more damage (about 2% more) than a shadow priest who parsed a 55. Which means one of the top 5% arcane mages did the same damage as a slightly above average shadow priest (granted, this was before the balancing pass, but it should still be a red flag on how problematic it is).
Arcane hasn’t been so bad that you can’t play it, but if you’re looking to bring a damage dealer to a fight, arcane has been one of the worst choices. Icy Veins considers it “A” tier for M+ now, but there are only 3 specs below A tier. Also, Arcane’s AoE has been less far behind than single target. I believe the “20% buff needed” that was mentioned was specifically for the single target rotation.
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Buddy, I’ve purple parsed on heroic fights and the monk that’s purple parsing in my raid does 30-50% more damage than me. Parsing means nothing. Arcane is woefully behind on single target and the logs prove it. We can hold our own on cleave fights like Stix, but on pure single target fights Arcane is scraping the bottom of the barrel along with other ST-undertuned casters like Elemental and Balance.
Edit: The comparison still isn’t very fair though since there are WAY more WW parses than Arcane, as most serious mages currently are Fire. So Arcane is likely a little better than what parses indicate, but there’s still a huge gap between Arcane and top specs regardless.
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Except that it is according to every metric.
It’s not.
If your guild is having fun and downing bosses, more power to you, but you seem to be “that guy” on the forums who thinks they know better than every other person, all the top players and all the mathematical guides. Arcane is still bad, whether you accept it or not.
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By who? I have yet to see it listed as such anywhere. Not that it matters in the slightest because those tier lists are completely meaningless and often inaccurate and biased since they tend to focus solely on raw damage output under ideal conditions, something that very few if any players can reproduce with any consistency. Not to mention that the aforementioned conditions aren’t solely in the player’s control when it comes to any form of group content.
There is so much more that should go into ranking specs such as the ease or difficulty of the rotation, how enjoyable and engaging it is, the utility that it offers, its visual appeal, and so on. Damage is just one, and I would argue a small, part of the equation.
Atm, Arcane ranks poorly on virtual all relevant scales.
As many of you have debated me on, I’m into the numbers. And it’s looking to be not bad, but also not meta. Arcane when played well can do a lot of damage to 5 targets, but the target cap at this point will prevent the spec from being meta unless single target is given a massive buff (blast getting say a 30% buff would do it I think)
Right now it looks like arcane is going to be a great spec for a couple of dungeons like theater of pain which has a lot of pulls where it really doesn’t make sense to pull big (because mobs are on different platforms etc)
But it will also be a horrible for a couple of dungeons. cinderbrew meadery comes to mind because there are some really big pulls possible.
You can tell because the average arcane damage is actually decent, but the top damage is still quite low, but the really top groups will not be taking it because it is very hard to do head and sholders above average damage since the groups doing this top damage are doing massive pulls.
Tl;DR arcane will be totally viable and even good for people running 10-15’s or so (rough guess) but are still bottom of the pack as far as what the top players will choose because these groups are doing dungeons with fewer but much bigger pulls.
Parses are by spec. So the amount of damage for say, a ret paladin to parse 100, is totally different than the amount of damage for an arcane mage to parse 100. In other words, the parse only says how well that person performed relative to other people playing that spec.
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So I should probably keep trying to learn other specs to raid with huh lol, I did a few more mythic+ runs yesterday and I was doing a slight more damage than before. But it isn’t by a ton, my mythic+ damage wasn’t terrible before the buff either. The raiding is where my damage feels extremely weak.
I can’t parse a 100% yet but even if I did, I doubt I’d be near others lol.
As is, I do not feel this spec is viable for mythic raiding. Raid comes this weekend so I’ll get to experience it with the buff. My hopes are not high.
it does feel weird to do so little single target as arcane, but if it is what you enjoy the most then it’s probably fine to play
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Yeah, I’ll keep trying. See how it goes.
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Exactly. But it’s still middle of the pack now. Ppl will only be happy here when it’s at the top and since it has a target cap, it never will be. But I see people compiling saying they do poor damage and realistically they are just bad at arcane.
ehh, I personally have stopped worrying about the meta. If I have to play a spec I don’t enjoy to be “viable” for the season (read: not get kicked out of groups when they see I’m playing that spec) I’m playing a lot less that season.
So while many people here will only be happy with meta, I personally am happy (and prefer) being middle of the pack.
The moment I saw arcane was going to be meta during the 11.0 beta I groaned out loud, because I knew the spec was going to wind up suffering through a bunch of changes and then an eventual nerf. And I was right.
I would MUCH rather we stick to the middle of the pack. And now that it seems that’s about where we are, I’m getting excited to play this season again.
I like that arcane is a challenging spec and not for everyone. I think a lot of us like the complexity. I’d rather it be a spec few play, but not because of a bad reputation – rather that it is a bit complicated for the reward.
To me middle of the pack is actually perfect.
Except it’s not. If we were 20% behind the middle at minimum and dead last overall, 8% is not going to make us mid-pack. Bottom mid at best.
Straw man much? I have yet to see someone here asking/demanding that arcane be top. Just not so bad they are kicked from groups or feel like a burden to said groups.
Still haven’t learned anything I see. 
Let’s try this again since you clearly don’t understand how logs work: If you are arcane and do (making up numbers here) 1.5 million for a fight and that’s 98th percentile, it means you did better than 97% of other arcane mages and = to 1% (the people parsing 98s). It has nothing whatsoever to do with how arcane does against any other spec. If a fury warrior does 1.5 million on a fight and gets a 43%, it means a) they were on the bottom half of what fury can do and b) that their ceiling is vastly higher than arcane.
Telling people they are bad and need to L2arcane, especially when you don’t seem to understand comparative logs is both ironic and laughable. Some of the best arcane mages in the world are on here saying it’s bad, but nope, you know better.
I don’t need top damage. I like the spec and have fun playing it. What isn’t fun is feeling like I can’t do well enough to positively contribute all the time. Middle of the pack is fine to me. As long as I’m not middle because two other people died and two are tanks. lol
There’s like one raid boss actually feel like I’m doing good damage on and it’s one I actually parse lower on.
It’s just not single target
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I feel it, in M+ I’m on par with the other capped classes. I think it’s a great start, now they need to tune the sets and give us a little more power with that, and things will be great.
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Not gonna say I can’t improve. Obviously I can
And I have!
So I won’t argue about it no more. The post was because I couldn’t feel much difference at first in mythic plus.
I got raid on weekend and I’ll try my best to do better.